D: You ARE CC (ala Alan's most recent descriptions)…

T: Let’s see…

Alan’s last description—

CC: There is no fundamental difference between God's work in creating and sustaining. As long as creation endures, there must be a continuous activity on God's part that efficaciously “brings about” the entire being of every existing created thing. This model is committed to something like an anti-conservation of being principle: contingent beings cannot continue to exist for even an instant if God should stop the sustaining input.

I don’t see why Alan would think I’m CC. Of course, there are some ambiguities here, like what constitutes a “fundamental” difference or what he has in mind by “brings about.” I think by “brings about” he probably means “brings into existence ex nihilo” (which YOU keep saying IS what you believe but which I keep saying is NOT what I believe), and that’s precisely why there’s NO fundamental difference between God’s work in creation and his work in sustaining. They’re both the same work essentially.

To my mind, creation and sustaining are NOT both the same work essentially. They’re essentially different, ‘fundamentally’ different—in what the act intends and thus in what it effects. Of course, all ‘acts’ of God are on one level fundamentally the same. God is immaterial spirit and pure mind (or something like that). Such a mind would ‘effect’ all its contingent desires through essentially the same means—just ‘willing’ them specifically; ‘commanding’ that they be. So yes, on this level things are basically the same. BUT this doesn’t make the ‘content’ or desired end of what is willed the same or give us ‘the same act’ in creation and sustaining. So depending on where and how we insist “fundamental” be inserted into all this, I wouldn’t agree with CC’s “there’s no fundamental difference between God’s work in creating and sustaining.”

I also disagree that the effect of God’s sustaining activity is to “bring about creation’s existence ex nihilo.” But that’s exactly how you said you view it, and that’s what Alan no doubt means by “bring about” in his CC. But I don’t think “sustaining” amounts to this sort of “bringing about.” So I can’t be CC.

The only thing I have in common with CC is the belief that were God to cease whatever activity constitutes his ‘sustaining’ of the world, the world would immediately cease to exist. If Alan wants to say that this one point makes me CC in spite of my disagreements with everything else in CC, I think that would be rather arbitrary. These models are just play things we’re making up and kicking around to help focus on the issues. We MIGHT manage to really map reality. But I see no reason why the infusion model must REQUIRE that creation exist for some time in the absolute absence of God. It MAY be that. I mean, that’s “a” model. But I disagree with the core CC claims, and I bring the ‘immediacy” which Alan seems to limit to CC into the Infusion model where he seems to think that ‘infusion’ entails creation’s ability to run “on its own” for a while, or even indefinitely in the absence of God.

So let me suggest my own FOURTH model—

Sustainment

(Nifty title eh? I was gonna call it the Divine Unmediated Infusion-Sustainment Hybrid Speech-Act Model, but then thought, “Nahhh.”)

1) ‘Creating’ the universe and ‘sustaining the universe’ are not identical acts. However fundamentally alike or different they are in terms of issuing forth from one and the same divine mind via the Logos of God, they are fundamentally different in their content/intention, and effect. Both ‘creation’ and ‘sustainment’ are commands of the Logos of God, but each commands something fundamentally different. In ‘creating’ God “brings into existence ex nihilo what does not exist” while in ‘sustaining’ God “carries what does exist” even though both are effects of the command of God.

2) There is continuity of identity for discrete entities through time.

3) Creatures are self-determining, final causes. This means that effects (of creaturely causes) are brought into existence from previous states. But CC denies this. Per CC all states are brought into existence by God alone. (D, this is what’s MOST objectionable about CC to Alan, Jeff, and me. There seems to be no way for creature’s to be the ones determining their effects if those effects are in fact called into existence ex nihilo by the fiat of God. It breaks the continuity between ‘cause’ and ‘effect’. See?)

4) God’s ‘carrying’ (Heb. 1.3) or ‘sustaining’ of the universe is a continual, present activity unmediated by any tertium quid, so that should God cease “to bear” the universe, the universe would cease “to be borne” and immediately pass out of existence, for to exist as created is to “be borne/carried” by the word of God and to “not be borne” by the word of God is to “not exist.”

There, now we have a fourth model and the ‘immediacy’ of (4) isn’t the exclusive property of CC.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 8/5/2009 11:05:26 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Similtude) : 8/5/2009 9:02:20 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Similtude) : 8/5/2009 1:05:25 PM (GMT-5)

WARNING! LONG POST. SORRY.

Jeff, I love the heart and passionate thinking you bring. Always challenging and respectful. I love debates that maintain this. It’s SO helpful.

Jeff: Yes, but I posit a pre-fallen state that is a VIRTUAL UTOPIA, TOM! Had we been SINLESS, that UTOPIA would have continued!

Tom: What utopia? Maybe this is another difference. I begin with a ‘beginning’ that isn’t what it’s "meant to become" and which must journey and mature twoard its ‘telos’. So the original state is only perfect and good in the sense that it's what it needs to be in order to become. You begin with an ‘end’ state, a ‘telos’, that we fall from and have to “get back to.”

What’s so utopian about human beings who have not yet grown into their full ‘telos’—even if they have not yet sinned? What’s utopian about a world in which Satan and his minions are free to roam and tempt and, etc.? What’s utopian about mortality and hunger? What’s utopian about having to poop! (Just kiddin. Had to put that in for Teresa!)

The utopia we’re created for has to be co-created by us and God. Even if you don’t agree with me that God couldn’t get us into loving relations any other way, you still posit a unique pleasure God gets from freely chosen love and for which pleasure he created, so you posit a chosen ‘telos’ that couldn’t be gotten any other way. And that implies a journey of becoming, a maturing process. You want to say God creates for a pleasure that's the result of human free becoming, but then you suppose God to have plopped us into a utopian Garden that he wants to get us "back" to. Doesn't make sense to me.

But Bro, this “had we remained sinless” stuff is a pipe dream. We HAVE to build our theodicy on the far greater and virtually inevitable certainty that sin will erupt. It’s a foregone conclusion.

-----------------------

Jeff: You seem to be contradicting yourself, here. Either God gets rid of natural sufferings or He doesn't. As for ALL natural suffering that occurs being necessary for "trust" and "faith," I'd need an explanation of that. As does the idea that God knew that sin was certain and yet was not the author of it. It either had a probability less than 1 or not. If it's less than one, that has to be explained.

Tom: From the movie Princess Bride, Inigo, in a drunken stupor back home in his shack says, “Veciani told me to go back to the beginning, and back to the beginning is where I go. And that is where I’ll stay! I am waiting for Veciani.” Know the scene? That’s us.

1) I suppose God will get rid of natural evil by means of the same act of redeeming glorification that will be humanity’s glorification. The created order will only finally be all it can and was intended to be when humanity is all it can and was intended to be. I don’t know all the factors God will take into account in deciding, “OK, that’s it. That’s enough. Angels, go stand at the four corners of the Earth and blow your trumpets, and you there, you four horsemen; mount up ride out!” But SOME such confluence of factors must be what God is working toward, unless God’s choice to wind it all up is completely arbitrary, which I doubt.

2) I think there’s good reason to suppose that the creation was jacked up before Adam and Eve got here and that the Garden was not the way the entire world was. Satan and his minions were already present. And they’re not tidying up or trimming trees either as the welcoming committee, right? Our parents were to “subdue” (note the violent overtones of the word) the Earth. Their sinless utopia WILL meet with opposition. There will be collateral damage. They will suffer. They will have to learn to trust that their suffering isn’t because they’ve done anything wrong or have displeased God. They’ll have to grow into their natural capacities for governance and partnership with God. But creation has to be ‘subdued’ in the process. This approach doesn’t work for a lot of people. I understand.

3) The probability that sin would eventually arise was less than one, yes (if you don’t mind leaving the Milky Way and beyond to track the line of zero’s prior to the final 9). If you find any value or encouragement in this, have at it Bro! I can’t find any value in it and wouldn’t rest any hope or significant claim upon it. I don’t find it meaningful even to contemplate, and I think it hopeless (perhaps even irrational) to try to make use of it in explaining evil and suffering as you do. If I wanted to explain evil, this ‘less than 1’ probability is the last place I’d go, and then only in an act admitting utter defeat. I think God’s competence HAS to be accounted for elsewhere, because God is in sad shape if his competence EVEN PARTLY rests on the probability of sin’s never poisoning the waters.

--------------------------------

Jeff: Hence, God could not have foreknown probabilistically PRIOR to that original sequence.

Tom: You’re saying there is no probability for heads for a fair coin toss if that coin is the first coin ever tossed? And the probability of heads on at least one of five tosses. You’re telling me there’s NO probability for this if these are the first five tosses ever? I disagree of course. Maybe you and Alan can box it out over that.

Jeff: Probability can't get you where you want to go, Tom.

Tom: I don’t need probability to get me where I’m going, that’s the thing. I got into the probability stuff because you insisted on a less than one probability. You’re the one seeking refuge in math, the one NEEDING the probability that sin never arise to be small enough to justify your belief in a ‘competent’ God. But where I’m going this probability doesn’t matter. For I claim that God banks on sin’s poisoning the waters. He knows it’s gonna happen eventually. If you really want to imagine that the probability of (human) sin’s NEVER occurring was low enough to support the weight of bearing divine competence, well, I guess everybody’s gotta do what they gotta do.

Jeff: Something other than math is needed to get you where you wanna go.

Tom: Exactly. You’re the one that needs the math of a ‘less than 1’ probability. I can let it go.

Jeff: And you have not explained that yet. You just say abstractions that have no explanatory details in terms of analogy.

Tom: I think I’ve offered a bit more than that, but whatever. I’m still waiting for your explanation of a how a person’s choice to love can be determined for them by someone or something else in a way that we intuitively accept and affirm. As far as I’m concerned, Jeff, my and Greg’s claim that God cannot create us unfailingly loving from the get-go is pretty secure. It has the weight of universal human experience behind it to start with—which ought to make it the default view at least and place the burden of proof upon YOU to dislodge it, something you’ve not done, and frankly I don’t think you can do.

-----------------------------

Jeff: I'm not trying to change your mind. I'm saying you're nowhere NEAR being at a place where you are warranted in saying that ALan and I have views that SUCK (I assume you were just kidding, anyway).

Tom: Ah, I should apologize then. You’ve brought this up a couple times. Forgive me, really. I could never think that about you or Alan. A few others on this forum, yes, but never you two. I was totally kidding.

--------------------------------

Jeff: ALL mega-explanations involve what SEEM like patent absurdities. So they ALL SUCK in that sense. No room for nothing but humility when we get to ULTIMATE explanations.

Tom: Right.

Jeff: What is important is that God MUST be benevolent if we even have the ability to competently apprehend AT ALL. Because rational ends are a SUBclass of BENEVOLENT ends.

Tom: Agree.

Jeff: And natural evil doesn't seem to add anything to the explanation. We either have the ability to see the theodicy implications of BELIEF in ANY kind of inference, or there is NO APPREHENDABLE benevolent creator. All theistic mega-explanations explain natural evil in non-intuitive ways that are, in some sense, either non-evidentiary or seemingly implausible. I know of no exceptions.

Tom: Well, we all do the best we can. Like you said, we HAVE to explain it. And if all explanations are implausible, then what are you on me about? Just to remind me that I haven’t proved anything and that I’m in the same boat as everybody else? I get that. I humbly confess that I could be wrong, yes. But if doesn’t matter WHICH explanation of natural evil one adopts, then just push your hand in the hat and pull one out. Any implausible non-intuitive explanation is as good as the next, right? But you obviously ‘pick’ one explanation over all the others, yours over mine for example. So you must feel YOURS is plausible enough to make it preferable and valuable over and against mine.

---------------------------------

Jeff: Natural evil creates the need of positing non-evidentiary or implausible claims that are not intuitive--which is EXACTLY what both of us do.

Tom: You and I have already recognized we don’t share the same intuitions, so perhaps my intuitions make my view intuitively plausible TO ME as your intuitions make your view more plausible TO YOU. But to say our explanations are necessarily utterly non-intuitive and implausible? Why do you keep posting if you think that?

Jeff: There is nothing intuitive, evidentiary, or plausible about the idea that literally ALL natural evil is necessary for human becoming.

Tom: I can certainly see how all natural evil that humans suffer would occasion an opportunity for growth and improvement in virtue, yes. If you don’t see this, fine. But perhaps you’re thinking of animal suffering. That’s the only other natural evil I can think of that cannot be an occasion for human becoming. But I never suggested that every occurrence of natural evil in the world was directly necessary to some instance of human becoming. No doubt someone could respond with, “Well, then there exists natural evil that’s vain and pointless because it’s unrelated to human becoming.” I suppose my answer would be that creation is a unified whole, that it has a certain integrity to it, and that this makes such suffering unavoidable. In other words, there’s no manipulating creation so that ONLY HUMANS might suffer in landslides but rabbits never will. Again, the natural order which our parents were to subdue was not a virtual utopia, even if their immediate environment was otherwise 5 star. There’s nothing in Genesis that suggests to me they weren’t in for a fight, for themselves and for the creation, or that the tending and extending of Eden would happen safely and without violence or loss. Everything points in the opposite direction as far as I’m concerned.

Jeff: The only things that MAKES such OT history plausible in any conceivable sense are these facts:

1) Jesus seemed to have implied that Genesis was scripture,

and

2) all OTHER explanations (including non-historical interpretations of Genesis) are ALSO non-intuitive, non-evidentiary, and implausible.

Tom: Genesis is Scripture. Those who interpret it figuratively think so as well.

Secondly, if all explanations of natural evil are non-intuitive, non-evidentiary, and implausible, then I guess you have no plausible belief in the ‘competence’ of God. What do you do with that Jeff? Have you conceded God’s incompetency then? God’s ‘incompetency’ must seem more plausible to you than his ‘competency’? If not, how does God appear plausibly competent to you? Do you have an explanation of natural evil that is not non-intuitive, non-evidentiary, and implausible? You’ve declared there are no such explanations.

I don’t draw the dividing line between this world and the next that you draw, so that infants who never get to see in this world but do in the next constitute a challenge to divine competency. I see more continuity between worlds. In fact, I just see ONE world on ONE journey. I see the eschaton as THIS world fulfilled, what THIS WORLD was intended to become. It’s ‘telos’. All infants will see and enjoy the created order with their natural eyes as God intended. This view doesn’t work FOR YOU. I accept that. You’ll have to pick some other non-intuitive, non-evidentiary implausible story. Perhaps you want to remind me that my story can’t really work for me they way I think it does because it’s REALLY just a non-intuitive, implausible abstraction I’ve glued together. I acknowledge your opinion.

If all explanations of evil posit unintuitive, implausible, non-evidentiary assumptions and beliefs, and are no more plausible than the least plausible of the beliefs necessary to the overall view, then any explanation is as good or useless as the next. So pick one and poor yourself a beer. Then pull up a chair and let’s mourn the death of the competent God, right?

So where do we go from here?

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 8/6/2009 6:01:52 AM (GMT-5)

Tom: So let me suggest my own FOURTH model—

Sustainment
1) ‘Creating’ the universe and ‘sustaining the universe’ are not identical acts.
2) There is continuity of identity for discrete entities through time.
3) Creatures are self-determining, final causes.
4) God’s ‘sustaining’ of the universe is a present activity unmediated by any tertium quid.

D: Fine. I'll go with all this.

Tom: Whoooah, really?

T

PS Check your private messages.

Post Edited (One Love) : 8/6/2009 8:50:46 AM (GMT-5)

Tom: Jeff, I love the heart and passionate thinking you bring. Always challenging and respectful. I love debates that maintain this. It’s SO helpful.

Jeff: Same to you, bro. We could never does this at church! Or even on most forums for that matter. <G>

Jeff: Yes, but I posit a pre-fallen state that is a VIRTUAL UTOPIA, TOM! Had we been SINLESS, that UTOPIA would have continued!

Tom: What utopia? Maybe this is another difference. I begin with a ‘beginning’ that isn’t what it’s "meant to become" and which must journey and mature twoard its ‘telos’. So the original state is only perfect and good in the sense that it's what it needs to be in order to become. You begin with an ‘end’ state, a ‘telos’, that we fall from and have to “get back to.”

Jeff: I don't think so. There would have been no "end" state in Eden until the earth was "filled up" and, if UR is true, until all those who might have died had been redeemed. There was going to be a stage of "significant" freedom at least until the earth was "filled up," IMO. Or at least I see no reason to assume otherwise. Which is why I call Eden a "virtual" utopia. For it WAS one compared to what we now experience.

Tom: Even if you don’t agree with me that God couldn’t get us into loving relations any other way, you still posit a unique pleasure God gets from freely chosen love and for which pleasure he created, so you posit a chosen ‘telos’ that couldn’t be gotten any other way. And that implies a journey of becoming, a maturing process. You want to say God creates for a pleasure that's the result of human free becoming, but then you suppose God to have plopped us into a utopian Garden that he wants to get us "back" to. Doesn't make sense to me.

Jeff: I answered this above.

Tom: But Bro, this “had we remained sinless” stuff is a pipe dream. We HAVE to build our theodicy on the far greater and virtually inevitable certainty that sin will erupt. It’s a foregone conclusion.

Jeff: I find it logically impossible for reasons I will reiterate below.

Tom: 1) I suppose God will get rid of natural evil by means of the same act of redeeming glorification that will be humanity’s glorification. The created order will only finally be all it can and was intended to be when humanity is all it can and was intended to be. I don’t know all the factors God will take into account in deciding, “OK, that’s it. That’s enough. Angels, go stand at the four corners of the Earth and blow your trumpets, and you there, you four horsemen; mount up ride out!” But SOME such confluence of factors must be what God is working toward, unless God’s choice to wind it all up is completely arbitrary, which I doubt.

Jeff: Exactly. And my inferences about those confluences come from analogical reasoning and exegesis (which is, itself, a species of analogical reasoning). Using these sources, I can't get to "God can't create humans with the divine nature from the get-go." If that's intuitive to you then all I can say is that it's not for me. What I know of God's capacities comes from scripture and what is entailed in or implied by or correlative with my own analogical inferences about what the ends of God are. And I'm not aware of any scriptural text that says or implies that God can't create volitional beings with the divine nature from the get-go. And no inference I've made of divine ends implies it. So I don't have that claim as an adjudicating aid in my theodicy.

Tom: 2) I think there’s good reason to suppose that the creation was jacked up before Adam and Eve got here and that the Garden was not the way the entire world was. Satan and his minions were already present. And they’re not tidying up or trimming trees either as the welcoming committee, right?

Jeff: I'm unaware of how we could know that from scripture. 

Tom: Our parents were to “subdue” (note the violent overtones of the word) the Earth. Their sinless utopia WILL meet with opposition. There will be collateral damage. They will suffer. They will have to learn to trust that their suffering isn’t because they’ve done anything wrong or have displeased God. They’ll have to grow into their natural capacities for governance and partnership with God. But creation has to be ‘subdued’ in the process. This approach doesn’t work for a lot of people. I understand.

Jeff: It doesn't work for me because:

1) Subdue might mean something as mundane as creatively bringing the fuana to aesthetic arrangements and activities. After all, the verse says God told them to "replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have DOMINION over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." No hint there that the subduing/dominion is to be over angels or spirits.

2) Even if the subduing is about angels, I can't even imagine what that would mean. Even Greg never explains that. How could poor little Adam subdue a being that can manipulate DNA, in his opinion? It makes no sense to me.

Tom: 3) The probability that sin would eventually arise was less than one, yes (if you don’t mind leaving the Milky Way and beyond to track the line of zero’s prior to the final 9).

Jeff: I'm at a complete loss to see how you could know it is less than one and yet know it to be within so specific of a mathematical range. I know of no discursive mode of thought that could get you there. And I certainly don't see how such a specific claim is intuitive.

Tom: If you find any value or encouragement in this, have at it Bro! I can’t find any value in it and wouldn’t rest any hope or significant claim upon it.

Jeff: I have no encouragement from it at all. Luckily, I also see no way you could know it or infer it in the first place.   

Tom: You’re saying there is no probability for heads for a fair coin toss if that coin is the first coin ever tossed?

Jeff: By the FREQUENCY view of probability only. Here are the 3 views again:

According to the frequency theory of probability, the probability of an event is the limit of the percentage of times that the event occurs in repeated, independent trials under essentially the same circumstances. According to the subjective theory of probability, a probability is a number that measures how strongly we believe an event will occur. The number is on a scale of 0% to 100%, with 0% indicating that we are completely sure it won't occur, and 100% indicating that we are completely sure that it will occur. According to the theory of equally likely outcomes, if an experiment has n possible outcomes, and (for example, by symmetry) there is no reason that any of the n possible outcomes should occur preferentially to any of the others, then the chance of each outcome is 100%/n.

As you can see, if you are using probability, you are using the "subjective theory of probability." Tha's the view that can't be articulated in terms of HUMAN GROUNDS of inference. It's just SUBJECTIVE. As such, it is individualistic, and irrelevant to anyone that doesn't have the same subjective sense of it. That's not a show-stopper for you. It's just irrelevant to me. And that's no reflection on me either. For subjectivity is RELATIVISTIC.

Jeff: Probability can't get you where you want to go, Tom.

Tom:  You’re the one seeking refuge in math, the one NEEDING the probability that sin never arise to be small enough to justify your belief in a ‘competent’ God. But where I’m going this probability doesn’t matter. For I claim that God banks on sin’s poisoning the waters. He knows it’s gonna happen eventually. If you really want to imagine that the probability of (human) sin’s NEVER occurring was low enough to support the weight of bearing divine competence, well, I guess everybody’s gotta do what they gotta do.

Jeff: You're missing my GROUNDS. Your view is not logically possible for me because I define things different than you do. To me, a divine end (or telos) is divinely INTENDED. But it is inconceivable to me how God could INTEND what He KNOWS is impossible. When you say sin is inevitable, you are saying, to my understanding of language, that it is IMPOSSIBLE that it NOT occur. But in that case, per my definition of things, then God could NOT create an order that conditioned even the POSSIBILITY of His intent, ...

OR that what you are calling sin is not what I call sin. To my mind, sin is falling short of what God prefers for us. If God prefers we not act a certain way, then it is sin for us to do so. So if sin is inevitable, God is incompetent to bring about a creation that conditions the possibility of SOFA's that He prefers for it.

So how do you define sin?

Tom: I’m still waiting for your explanation of a how a person’s choice to love can be determined for them by someone or something else in a way that we intuitively accept and affirm.

Jeff: It can't be determined. We both say that when we partake of the divine nature we will be FREE. We just won't be free to sin. By analogy, God's creation is also an act of love, and it was free. And yet God is NOT free to be NON-benevolent.

Tom: As far as I’m concerned, Jeff, my and Greg’s claim that God cannot create us unfailingly loving from the get-go is pretty secure. It has the weight of universal human experience behind it to start with—which ought to make it the default view at least and place the burden of proof upon YOU to dislodge it, something you’ve not done, and frankly I don’t think you can do.

Jeff: What experience would tell me what God can't do in that regard? My experience merely tells me that I am IN a creational project that involves significant freedom. It tells me nothing about what other creations God might have created, etc. I could say God can't create more than once since my only experience happens to be in this ONE creation. But that would be an unwarranted inference because it has no real grounds. I see your claim as groundless in that same way. To say that God can create beings with divine nature from the get-go is not a logically impossible claim is it? If so, how?

Tom: Well, we all do the best we can. Like you said, we HAVE to explain it. And if all explanations are implausible, then what are you on me about? Just to remind me that I haven’t proved anything and that I’m in the same boat as everybody else?

Jeff: Actually, yes. I think we ought to get in the habit of articulating our theodicies in ways where we acknowledge as clearly as possible how A-plausible (I'll quit using IMplausible since that typically has other connotations) some ASPECTS of ALL of them are. This puts the emphasis where D has suggested it ought to be--Namely, that theodicy can never be about WHETHER God is benevolent and competent. God MUST be known as benevolent and competent for us to know ANYTHING at all, inferentially. All else is just trying to find grounds for how this can be, given what seems to be "vain" suffering.

People will always have what seems to them to be plausible arguments against any partiular theodicy. What they can not do is explain how the notion of warranted belief is intelligible and coherent apart from proper function. IOW, to argue against divine benevolence and competence proves TOO MUCH. It proves that literally all belief about an extra-ego reality is blind. We need to remind people of what is at stake IF God is not benevolent. THen they will at least see WHY intelligent people give serious thought about forming as plausible theodicies as they can. It's what rational people do.

Tom:  But if doesn’t matter WHICH explanation of natural evil one adopts, then just push your hand in the hat and pull one out. Any implausible non-intuitive explanation is as good as the next, right? But you obviously ‘pick’ one explanation over all the others, yours over mine for example. So you must feel YOURS is plausible enough to make it preferable and valuable over and against mine.

Jeff: Right, but it's relative given our definitions, etc. This is inevitable. Again, it's about learning how to articulate our views so as to not waste time. We're getting better at it. As of now, we now know not to waste time on probability and we know we need to work on definitions of sin and how sin is related or not related to God's preference for creational SOFA's.

Tom: You and I have already recognized we don’t share the same intuitions, so perhaps my intuitions make my view intuitively plausible TO ME as your intuitions make your view more plausible TO YOU. But to say our explanations are necessarily utterly non-intuitive and implausible? Why do you keep posting if you think that?

Jeff:I've explained above. But I should again clarify that I mean A-plausible. Some beliefs we have are a-plausible. Scientific studies have shown that people tend to believe other people way more gullibly than they ought. I think this is partly because being continually wary is psychologically exhausting and doesn't pay off in the long run for most people. But still, there are beliefs we must have that are aplausible, simply because logical necessity compels us to decide between logical possibilities for which we have no good analogies.

QT was one such example until some really smart people thought up some other logical possibilities that had known  analogues. Prior to that though, "quantum phenomena" seemed utterly counter-intuitive to everyone, and no one knew how to account for another possibility. So the only possibilities seemed to be that reality is counter-intuitive (which puts us right back into radical skepticism) or that some intuitive explanation would be forth-coming--both were A-PLAUSIBLE beliefs in the sese that they were not analogical inferences in the usual sense of the word).

Einstein and Bohr believed the latter. It took time, but some progress was eventually made. Those other possibilities have not been experimentally verified, because there is no equipment capable of verifying it. But people who want to ground belief in the intuitive welcome those analogical possibilities.

Tom: Secondly, if all explanations of natural evil are non-intuitive, non-evidentiary, and implausible, then I guess you have no plausible belief in the ‘competence’ of God. What do you do with that Jeff? Have you conceded God’s incompetency then? God’s ‘incompetency’ must seem more plausible to you than his ‘competency’? If not, how does God appear plausibly competent to you?

Jeff: No theodicy is utterly VOID of analogical reasoning. But all of them involve ASPECTS that are APLAUSIBLE. We do just what you always say--we believe the one that works best for us at the time. Mine has changed over time because of constant re-evaluation and learning.

Tom: I don’t draw the dividing line between this world and the next that you draw, so that infants who never get to see in this world but do in the next constitute a challenge to divine competency. I see more continuity between worlds. In fact, I just see ONE world on ONE journey. I see the eschaton as THIS world fulfilled, what THIS WORLD was intended to become. It’s ‘telos’. All infants will see and enjoy the created order with their natural eyes as God intended.

Jeff: I just don't see what the continuity has to do with it. The second pair of eyes (of the infant that died in a world that was designed in such a way that such deaths were INEVITABLE, per you) is a DIFFERENT pair of eyes. If God's created order included natural evil that ASSURED that SOME infants/fetuses would die prior to seeing, then it can not be true that ALL EYES are for seeing. For GOd can not INTEND what He knows is impossible. IOW, God can not have INTENDED for all eyes to see (and, therefore, all eyes aren't FOR seeing) if He KNEW it was impossible that ALL eyes actually SEE. If I'm wrong in my definitions, clear me up.

Tom: So where do we go from here?

Jeff: Let's define sin, intent, end, etc and see if "sin" and "end" can meaningfully be defined independent of the notion of "intent" or "preference." And if not, lets focus on that aspect of the debate. For THAT is the heart of it.

Post Edited (Similtude) : 8/8/2009 1:15:41 PM (GMT-5)

I guess I asked for that long post! Ha.

I think we might be done Bro. I can’t narrow down just what it is either. We agree on the nomenclature (we both ‘say’ God is necessary, triune, benevolent, competent, etc.), but don’t seem to have a shared understanding of what these, or key among them, mean. On top of that we have vastly different intuitions about love and creaturely being. I don’t know what kinda mileage we’re gonna get out of going back and forth.

I’ll address a few issues that came up on your last post and then we can see whether we’re done or not. I don’t think I have anything else I can say, so you can have the last word. Maybe the creative juices will flow after we let the issues lie for a while (though we’ve been deadlocked over these issues for as long as I can remember).

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Tom: What utopia? Maybe this is another difference. I begin with a ‘beginning’ that isn’t what it’s "meant to become" and which must journey and mature twoard its ‘telos’. So the original state is only perfect and good in the sense that it's what it needs to be in order to become. You begin with an ‘end’ state, a ‘telos’, that we fall from and have to “get back to.”

Jeff: I don't think so. There would have been no "end" state in Eden until the earth was "filled up”…

Tom: Yes, the numbers weren’t there. That’s not my point. The full numbers would be just more of the same beginning state you posit. More numbers doesn’t change WHAT is going on. As far as loving relationality is concerned, the quality of relationship between humans and God, you seem to posit a beginning end state. There was no further relational ‘telos’ to reach. For me, the ‘relationship’ wasn’t at the beginning what God intended it be. It had to ‘become’. You have to grant this now that you concede God creates for the pleasure he gets from volitional love. Volitional exercise is what ‘maturing’ and ‘becoming’ are all about.

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Tom: 1) I suppose God will get rid of natural evil by means of the same act of redeeming glorification that will be humanity’s glorification. The created order will only finally be all it can and was intended to be when humanity is all it can and was intended to be. I don’t know all the factors God will take into account in deciding, “OK, that’s it. That’s enough. Angels, go stand at the four corners of the Earth and blow your trumpets, and you there, you four horsemen; mount up ride out!” But SOME such confluence of factors must be what God is working toward, unless God’s choice to wind it all up is completely arbitrary, which I doubt.

Jeff: Exactly. And my inferences about those confluences come from analogical reasoning and exegesis (which is, itself, a species of analogical reasoning). Using these sources, I can't get to "God can't create humans with the divine nature from the get-go." If that's intuitive to you then all I can say is that it's not for me. What I know of God's capacities comes from scripture and what is entailed in or implied by or correlative with my own analogical inferences about what the ends of God are. And I'm not aware of any scriptural text that says or implies that God can't create volitional beings with the divine nature from the get-go.

Tom: It’s not primarily about God’s capacities per se, as if JUST thinking about God and what God wants tells us what is and isn’t possible. It’s primarily about created being and the nature and limitations of human capacities. God can only do with created being what can be done with created being, and just contemplating ‘God’ won’t tell us what can be done with human being. You have to contemplate human being. And when you do that, you have no basis in experience to suppose humans can have their love determined for them by another. On the contrary, every imagined instance of such determination (and it IS determination ‘that’ we love), by whatever means, is universally rejected. Everything we know about that being tells us to reject all deterministic forms of love. Show me that human being can be handled in the manner you suppose. It’s not about God primarily.

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Tom: 2) I think there’s good reason to suppose that the creation was jacked up before Adam and Eve got here and that the Garden was not the way the entire world was. Satan and his minions were already present. And they’re not tidying up or trimming trees either as the welcoming committee, right?

Jeff: I'm unaware of how we could know that from scripture. 

Tom: By ‘know’ do you mean ‘prove’? Are we doing this again?

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Tom: Our parents were to “subdue” (note the violent overtones of the word) the Earth. Their sinless utopia WILL meet with opposition. There will be collateral damage. They will suffer. They will have to learn to trust that their suffering isn’t because they’ve done anything wrong or have displeased God. They’ll have to grow into their natural capacities for governance and partnership with God. But creation has to be ‘subdued’ in the process. This approach doesn’t work for a lot of people. I understand.

Jeff: It doesn't work for me because subdue might mean…

Tom: Might mean. Might. How do you know it might mean this?

Jeff: No hint there that the subduing/dominion is to be over angels or spirits.

Tom: Angels and spirits? I wasn’t talking about angels or spirits.

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Jeff: I'm at a complete loss to see how you could know it is less than one and yet know it to be within so specific of a mathematical range.

Tom: What would YOU place it at, Jeff? Even? 50/50 basically? What. NO probability at all? That would create worse problems for you. God creates a free and risky world and has NO idea how likely it is that sin will even occur? That gets you the competence you need? What probability WILL secure a competent God for you?

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Jeff: Your view is not logically possible for me because I define things different than you do. To me, a divine end (or telos) is divinely INTENDED. But it is inconceivable to me how God could INTEND what He KNOWS is impossible. When you say sin is inevitable, you are saying, to my understanding of language, that it is IMPOSSIBLE that it NOT occur.

Tom: Jeff, come on. God can know that ULTIMATELY all will be as God intends, and this is NOT incompatible with God’s knowing that there will INEVITABLY be a TEMPORARY detour, that some things will for a time fail to be as God intends them to be. So saying sin will “inevitably erupt” is NOT to say it will “ultimately remain.” God intends an ULTIMATE state of perfect. The perfection he wants is a freely chosen one, and thus a risky one. You seem to not want to attach ANY likelihood to this risk, which is amazing to me, yet you INSIST that it be less than 1. How much less than one? You don’t know. Nor does God know I suppose. God just knows ‘some’ risk of horrible evils exists but just ‘how’ risky the project is God can’t say. But evidently MY probability of “nearly 1” causes problems. Can’t be THAT high. What’s it NEED to be Jeff, for you to say God is competent? Gimme a number, please. If you CAN’T give a number either because you don’t know it OR you don’t think God knows it because there is no such number, then how’s THAT deliver divine competence for you? How can you base your confident in God’s competence upon the probability and then say you know God is competent in spite of not knowing the probability?

Jeff: But in that case, per my definition of things, then God could NOT create an order that conditioned even the POSSIBILITY of His intent...

Tom: Then you should change your definitions, because it is not the case that whatever is ‘inevitable’ is ‘permanent’. You have to agree with that, and that’s all the definition you need. God can know that his intentions for creation will be temporarily unfulfilled but ultimately fulfilled. Definitionally you can’t dispute this. And this doesn’t deter God from creating because he knows that ultimately all his intentions will be fulfilled and the fulfillment (for us and God) will be worth the temporary failure.

Jeff: OR that what you are calling sin is not what I call sin. To my mind, sin is falling short of what God prefers for us. If God prefers we not act a certain way, then it is sin for us to do so. So if sin is inevitable, God is incompetent to bring about a creation that conditions the possibility of SOFA's that He prefers for it.

Tom: I have kids. I never intended them to sin. I always intended that they do right. But I had them knowing that they’d inevitably sin. The analogy applies perfectly. The point is that it is NOT the case that one is incompetent if one instantiates a state of affairs which one knows will temporarily fail to be what one intends if one knows that ultimately it will be all one intends it to be.

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Tom: I’m still waiting for your explanation of a how a person’s choice to love can be determined for them by someone or something else in a way that we intuitively accept and affirm.

Jeff: It can't be determined. We both say that when we partake of the divine nature we will be FREE. We just won't be free to sin.

Tom: My objection includes the freedom to choose a range of goods. It’s still the case that we’re determined by God ‘to love’. The same universal objection to this on existential grounds remains. Offer us an analogy of what you’re talking about and we’d all have the same objections. Suppose some person is determined (by whatever means) to only choose from among a range of equally loving options. Would people warm to the idea? No. If you discovered that your wife was determined by an implant to love you within a scope of equally loving options (as opposed to having which expression of her determined love also determined), you’re telling me you’d experience no existential angst? The rest of the world would feel THE SAME sense of loss as they would were it the case that their partners were exhaustively determined in every particular. Just being free to pick which deed among several equally supposedly loving deeds one performs doesn’t make folks feel any different about being determined.

True, I believe that in the eschaton we shall be compatibilitically loving (unfailingly loving) but free within that to libertarianly determine which loving expression we settle on. But this ONLY works because I also share in determining the unfailing loving character that stands behind the libertarian determination of loving expression. Once you posit unconditional determination of ‘nature’ or character, it all fails.

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Tom: As far as I’m concerned, Jeff, my and Greg’s claim that God cannot create us unfailingly loving from the get-go is pretty secure. It has the weight of universal human experience behind it to start with—which ought to make it the default view at least and place the burden of proof upon YOU to dislodge it, something you’ve not done, and frankly I don’t think you can do.

Jeff: What experience would tell me what God can't do in that regard?

Tom: That’s not the primary question. The question is, what experience of HUMAN nature and loving tells you God can’t do that with human nature? And the answer is, all human experience of love. All our experience with love tells us that if we are determined to love by a power or force outside our wills the love is NOT love.

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Tom: Well, we all do the best we can. Like you said, we HAVE to explain it. And if all explanations are implausible, then what are you on me about? Just to remind me that I haven’t proved anything and that I’m in the same boat as everybody else?

Jeff: Actually, yes. I think we ought to get in the habit of articulating our theodicies in ways where we acknowledge…

Tom: I’ll acknowledge it about my theism in addition to my theodicy. I’ll acknowledge that I cold be wrong about it all. But we keep talking about this. Why?

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Jeff: This puts the emphasis where D has suggested it ought to be--Namely, that theodicy can never be about WHETHER God is benevolent and competent.

Tom: How do you ‘know’ God is competent? I’ve been asking. You make his competency depend upon the likelihood of sin’s erupting. I keep asking for your bottom line competency. What is it? 10% 25% 50% 75% 90% 99.999% What? If you DON’T know, then how do you know God IS competent?

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Tom:  But if doesn’t matter WHICH explanation of natural evil one adopts, then just push your hand in the hat and pull one out. Any implausible non-intuitive explanation is as good as the next, right? But you obviously ‘pick’ one explanation over all the others, yours over mine for example. So you must feel YOURS is plausible enough to make it preferable and valuable over and against mine.

Jeff: Right, but it's relative given our definitions, etc.

Tom: That sounds circular. Our explanations are all implausible and non-intuitive, but the definitions we choose aren’t?

Jeff: This is inevitable. Again, it's about learning how to articulate our views so as to not waste time. We're getting better at it. As of now, we now know not to waste time on probability and we know we need to work on definitions of sin and how sin is related or not related to God's preference for creational SOFA's.

Tom: We’re NOT beyond probability yet, nor can we be, for YOU insist on a probability of less than 1 for sin’s erupting, and you make God’s competence depend upon this probability. So probability is at the heart of your theodicy, Jeff. I’m just trying to figure out what probability. Do you even know? Can you tell me what your bottom line probability is for evil’s eventually arising such that God can remain competent? Will anything less than 1 do? Is that it? For me, it doesn’t matter. If the probability were 1 that sin would at some point temporarily interrupt God’s project, God would still be competent because God knows that no manner of interruption by sin can ultimately prevent the fulfillment of God’s ends. It may not be 1. But it’s virtually one. God was less than competent, in my view, if he thinks anything else. So competency is about achieving your desired ends IN SPITE OF interruptions you know will happen.

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Tom: Secondly, if all explanations of natural evil are non-intuitive, non-evidentiary, and implausible, then I guess you have no plausible belief in the ‘competence’ of God. What do you do with that Jeff? Have you conceded God’s incompetency then? God’s ‘incompetency’ must seem more plausible to you than his ‘competency’? If not, how does God appear plausibly competent to you?

Jeff: No theodicy is utterly VOID of analogical reasoning. But all of them involve ASPECTS that are APLAUSIBLE. We do just what you always say--we believe the one that works best for us at the time. Mine has changed over time because of constant re-evaluation and learning.

Tom: So, again, tell me how God appears plausibly competent to you.

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Tom: I don’t draw the dividing line between this world and the next that you draw, so that infants who never get to see in this world but do in the next constitute a challenge to divine competency. I see more continuity between worlds. In fact, I just see ONE world on ONE journey. I see the eschaton as THIS world fulfilled, what THIS WORLD was intended to become. It’s ‘telos’. All infants will see and enjoy the created order with their natural eyes as God intended.

Jeff: I just don't see what the continuity has to do with it. The second pair of eyes (of the infant that died in a world that was designed in such a way that such deaths were INEVITABLE, per you) is a DIFFERENT pair of eyes. If God's created order included natural evil that ASSURED that SOME infants/fetuses would die prior to seeing, then it can not be true that ALL EYES are for seeing. For God can not INTEND what He knows is impossible. IOW, God can not have INTENDED for all eyes to see (and, therefore, all eyes aren't FOR seeing) if He KNEW it was impossible that ALL eyes actually SEE. If I'm wrong in my definitions, clear me up.

Tom: Doesn’t have to be the same ‘set’ of eyes. No ‘particular’ set of eyes from the start are known to inevitably not see. Human babies, when all goes well in the womb, arrive with eyes to see. That this is God’s intended design isn’t incompatible with his knowing that some first set of eyes won’t see even though the agent will not ultimately be deprived of what eyes are for, namely, seeing.

But dude, whatever the probability, Adam and Eve screwed up the first chance they got (or at least our FIRST set of parents screwed up, if not with the first opportunity). We can’t even get to the first generation before sin erupts. Come on dude. You really want to suppose God entertained the belief that it was more likely than not that human history would run its course without sin ever happening? God was just unlucky?

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Jeff: Let's define sin, intent, end, etc and see if "sin" and "end" can meaningfully be defined independent of the notion of "intent" or "preference." And if not, lets focus on that aspect of the debate. For THAT is the heart of it.

Tom: I’ve addressed it. Intending and preferring competently and lovingly don’t preclude knowing there will be some temporary failure of what’s intended. But you’re bound to have a different set of intuitions and definitions that make this impossible for you. So I think we might be done.

I don’t think there’s anyone but you and me left.

D? Anybody?

Tom

Tom: Yes, the numbers weren’t there. That’s not my point. The full numbers would be just more of the same beginning state you posit. More numbers doesn’t change WHAT is going on. As far as loving relationality is concerned, the quality of relationship between humans and God, you seem to posit a beginning end state. There was no further relational ‘telos’ to reach. For me, the ‘relationship’ wasn’t at the beginning what God intended it be. It had to ‘become’. You have to grant this now that you concede God creates for the pleasure he gets from volitional love. Volitional exercise is what ‘maturing’ and ‘becoming’ are all about.

Jeff: God gave them a command. They were to obey it. And presumably the same kind of solidification that goes on with other commands would have occurred with that one. Moreover, we don't know what ELSE might have come down the pipe had the thing not aborted so quickly. As I see it, the Eden account gives us information about something like some necessary "becoming" that humans would have had to go through. It may not be as impressive to you, but on the other hand, you don't know how to explain how ALL natural evil is necessary for becoming.

There usually are problems with degrees when it comes to intuition. So I'm not worrying about how intuitive the "becoming" aspect of Eden is or is not, to me. Because there is nothing intuitive to me about saying ALL natural evil is necessary for becoming either. But my definitions of sin, preference, and intent create for me a bona-fide incoherence if I say it was INEVITABLE that sin occur or that infants/fetuses would die of natural evil that God designed into the very fabric of the world.

Tom: Might mean. Might. How do you know it might mean this?

Jeff: Because the words "dominion" and "subdue" are used in association with one another, and the word "dominion" is used in reference to animals. That doesn't seem like a stretch to me.

Tom: Angels and spirits? I wasn’t talking about angels or spirits.

Jeff: Ok, fine. But whence violence, then? Was Adam to subdue tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, plagues, viruses, lethal mutations, etc? And could he and his descendants have done that with a probability of less than 1 for the death of even ONE infant/fetus? I'm not seeing anything intuitive or derivable here.

Now if you wanna say that the death of at least SOME infants/fetuses by NATURAL evil was INEVITABLE, then fine. At that point, the argument isn't about what Genesis means, it's about what does it mean to say those eyes were FOR seeing. It really IS about definitions. All I'm trying to explain is what implications the definitions I understand have for the different scenarios we can posit for earth history. I'm saying there are a-plausibilities no matter which way you go when it comes to natural evil.

But the "sin" thang is different. That's not just an a-plausibility for me. That one is a coherence problem.

Tom: I have kids. I never intended them to sin. I always intended that they do right. But I had them knowing that they’d inevitably sin. The analogy applies perfectly. The point is that it is NOT the case that one is incompetent if one instantiates a state of affairs which one knows will temporarily fail to be what one intends if one knows that ultimately it will be all one intends it to be.

Jeff: Don't see it, Tom. It seems like a pure contradiction to say that a person can TRULY intend a SOFA he/she knows is IMPOSSIBLE. They can PREFER that SOFA and just be too INCOMPETENT to provide the necessary conditions for its POSSIBILITY. But I'm trying to get around divine incompetence.

This is why I'm always harping on DEGREE of divine satisfaction. Anything God PREFERS from His creation was necessarily POSSIBLE. If any one human sin was absolutely inevitable from the get-go, I have no idea what sin even MEANS, unless God was incompetent. I can't go to either of these possibilities. They seem like show-stoppers.

Tom: Then you should change your definitions, because it is not the case that whatever is ‘inevitable’ is ‘permanent’. You have to agree with that, and that’s all the definition you need. God can know that his intentions for creation will be temporarily unfulfilled but ultimately fulfilled. Definitionally you can’t dispute this. And this doesn’t deter God from creating because he knows that ultimately all his intentions will be fulfilled and the fulfillment (for us and God) will be worth the temporary failure.

Jeff: We are in agreement that some ULTIMATE satisfaction from creation will render it worth God's suffering. And that's what you're getting at, above, as far as I can tell. But I don't see how it follows from that fact that God did not PREFER there not to be sin at all (otherwise, what does sin even MEAN?). But God seems like a dunce or incompetent if He actually PREFERRED what He absolutely KNEW was impossible. I can prefer impossible things all day long--because I really AM incompetent to bring about the conditions necessary to render my preferences POSSIBLE. God supposedly isn't incompetent, though.

Tom: My objection includes the freedom to choose a range of goods. It’s still the case that we’re determined by God ‘to love’. The same universal objection to this on existential grounds remains. Offer us an analogy of what you’re talking about and we’d all have the same objections. Suppose some person is determined (by whatever means) to only choose from among a range of equally loving options. Would people warm to the idea? No. If you discovered that your wife was determined by an implant to love you within a scope of equally loving options (as opposed to having which expression of her determined love also determined), you’re telling me you’d experience no existential angst? The rest of the world would feel THE SAME sense of loss as they would were it the case that their partners were exhaustively determined in every particular. Just being free to pick which deed among several equally supposedly loving deeds one performs doesn’t make folks feel any different about being determined.

Jeff: I totally agree that WE need relationships with other humans to be ones of significant freedom to be satisfied. That's human nature. But

1) God is supposedly BLISS'ED out by His relationship with His Son which is NOT one of significant freedom.

2) And even NOW, I am blissed out by my relationship with God, who is NOT significantly free.

3) And eventually, even humans won't be significantly free, and I'll still be blissed out, even though I have no idea how that can be.

So I'm still not seeing how my experience now limits what else CAN be. To see it, I'd have to know WHY I can be blissed out once all humans have partaken of the divine nature and see that the reason for that is not consistent with the possibility of God's creating humans with the divine nature from the get-go. But I don't have that knowledge. Thus, I can't SEE any incoherence.

Tom: I’ll acknowledge it about my theism in addition to my theodicy. I’ll acknowledge that I cold be wrong about it all. But we keep talking about this. Why?

Jeff: I guess because you're perceiving me as attacking your view when I'm just trying to understand how your definitions render it doable to you. And maybe if we're more diligent about acknowledging how a-plausible some of this stuff really is we won't get confused about what we're really trying to communicate. Heck, it's hard enough to get coherent on this stuff, much less plausible.

Tom: How do you ‘know’ God is competent? I’ve been asking. You make his competency depend upon the likelihood of sin’s erupting. I keep asking for your bottom line competency. What is it? 10% 25% 50% 75% 90% 99.999% What? If you DON’T know, then how do you know God IS competent?

Jeff: The benevolence and competence of God is a corollary of human conviction about any "claim" beyond "I exist and have subjective experience." The COMPETENCE of the human modes of inference is only CONCEIVABLY grounded in the COMPETENCE and BENEVOLENCE of our DESIGNER. This is what Plantinga is saying when he says "warranted belief" is only intelligible in terms of "proper function" of cognitive faculties. IOW, the only way to eliminate the corollary of a competent and benevolent Designer is to be a radical skeptic. And yet, no one really IS a radical skeptic. There are just people who want to be. Thus, statistics and probability has nothing to do with it.

Where probability language comes in is in terms of what God's intentions for creation ARE--other than apprehension, i.e. If sin (however else it is defined) is contrary to God's intent, then, per my understanding of "intent" and "competence," God necessarily created the world with initial conditions that rendered SINLESSNESS a real possibility. And the way to say that in probabilistic language (if that is even a valid way to talk) is to say that the probability of sin was LESS than one. Same goes if God intended ALL eyes to see (i.e., if all eyes are FOR seeing). This would mean that the probability of even ONE infant/fetus dying prior to seeing was LESS than one. Otherwise, God is not competent to provide for even the POSSIBILITY of what He intends. And that seems like a contradiction to what it means for God to be a competent designer. And that seems to imply that we can't MEANINGFULLY claim that we are competently designed to apprehend, even.

Essentially, you seem to be saying that the only thing that God REALLY intends is some final state. But that means that sin, per se, is not contrary to God's intent. But I, personally, don't know how to define sin meaningfully such that it is not contrary to God's intent. I just can't get there from here, epistemologically. But on the other hand, I don't think I'm being radically COUNTER-intuitive for thinking that sin is something contrary to God's intent, either. If so, I'm in plentiful company just like you are. And this just highlights the sheer difficulty of attaining convergence on such difficult subjects.

Tom: That sounds circular. Our explanations are all implausible and non-intuitive, but the definitions we choose aren’t?

Jeff: Plausibility comes in when there are MULTIPLE possibilities for consideration. I can't see ANY conceivable definition of sin that would not involve it being the contrary to God's intent. Whatever else sin might be, it seems to be at LEAST contrary to God's intent. Thus, plausibility never enters the picture, because I can't see even ONE other definition of sin such that sin is not contrary to God's intent. If you can help me see it, great. But if not, then how can plausibility have anything to do with it? Not seeing it.

Tom: If the probability were 1 that sin would at some point temporarily interrupt God’s project, God would still be competent because God knows that no manner of interruption by sin can ultimately prevent the fulfillment of God’s ends.

Jeff: An "end," per my conception of it, is an INTENDED state of affairs. So if God had no intentions regarding whether we live sinfully or non-sinfully, you are right. Because in that case, the ONLY thing God actually intended is the final state. Even the "becoming" was not intended.

I think our disconnect is about what creation is for. For me, it's divine PLEASURE. It's not some extra-divine state of affairs independent of the satisfaction God derives from it. And since it's pleasure, there can be DEGREES of pleasure that God PREFERRED. God gets MORE pleasure when there is less sin. He gets OPTIMAL pleasure if there is NO sin. Thus, I don't see how God could BUT intend the maximal amount of pleasure He could possibly derive from creation. Hence, sin is contrary to God's intent in the sense that it is contrary to the optimal amount of pleasure that God PREFERRED and, hence, INTENDED.

Tom: But dude, whatever the probability, Adam and Eve screwed up the first chance they got (or at least our FIRST set of parents screwed up, if not with the first opportunity). We can’t even get to the first generation before sin erupts. Come on dude. You really want to suppose God entertained the belief that it was more likely than not that human history would run its course without sin ever happening? God was just unlucky?

Jeff: Think back on the 3 kinds of probability theories. Here, you're appealing to the FREQUENCY theory of probability. And for God to predict based upon a FREQUENCY theory of probability, He had to observe a FREQUENCY to infer therefrom. There's no way to make this thing work. Open Theism is what it is. God CAN'T foreknow what is NOT inevitable. And what is INEVITABLE is INTENDED insomuch as God is too smart to intend what He knows is impossible. That's how it works as I understand the definitions. And I don't know any other way TO define those terms.

So it's about what I have to believe to be coherent. None of this proves Genesis is true in a historical sense. But the historical sense actually does provide an explanation of why we are SOLD under sin now, and why without the Spirit, no man can live sinlessly. And the NT seems to imply that the Spirit was not available to humans in the way it is now prior to the ressurection. Thus, sin was inevitable for EVERY man prior to the ressurection, seemingly. And the only way I know how to explain that sin was then inevitable and yet contrary to God's intent is if there was an initial state to which humans were sufficiently well-adapted to that their natural and volitional desires could have been consistent with God's intent. And reading Genesis historically seems to provide just such a doable account of things. For to say that God creates ALL of us with a sin nature seems to mean that sin was intended and, hence, PREFERRED. I can't make sense of that. At ALL.

I'm gonna be leaving town for a week tomorrow. I'll be busy most of the rest of the day. But if you want to continue, I'll try to find time for a smaller response. If not, we're good. I know I've profited from having to write this stuff down. It always helps me clarify my thinking in such a way that I'll be a bit more TO THE POINT the next time. Grace and Peace, bro.

1) ‘Creating’ the universe and ‘sustaining the universe’ are not identical acts.
2) There is continuity of identity for discrete entities through time.
3) Creatures are self-determining, final causes.
4) God’s ‘sustaining’ of the universe is a present activity unmediated by any tertium quid.

I followed up...

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In my mind, I'm the only real change I'm making is asserting continuity of God's Creation's existence in God rather than discontinuity. Instead of Creation flashing in and out of existence like virtual particles, Creation stays in existence, "borne" by God. Such that it's easier to maintain the cause/effect integrity of Creation for the preservation of creatures, being self-determining, final causes...right?

As long as it's CLEARLY UNDERSTOOD that Creation has NO MEANS of independent existence besides God's Presence and Will, such that Creation's existence would immediately cease if not for God's continual activity. I liked Alan's statement retooled...

According to the Infusion model, divine sustaining (OL's Note: distinct from ex nihilo creation) requires a constant energetic or existential input of some sort. To use an analogy, if you run an electric current through a wire, it will produce a magnetic field around the wire. Stop the current, and the magnetic field immediately goes away. It can't sustain itself. If God's sustaining is like this, then he's got to be constantly doing something to keep creation around. If he should stop doing that, even for a split second, then creation would immediately cease to be.

Non-negotiable.

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Seriously...before I did think of Creation kind of flashing in and out of existence at nigh imperceptible speed the way virtual particles do.  It made sense to me.  I mean, if virtual particles could do it, surely Creation as a whole could as well, especially given God's power.  But the magnetic field analogy (dealing with continuity rather the discontinuity) makes sense, too.  And if it solves the problem of integrity of creaturely agency, so much the better. 

Post Edited (One Love) : 8/10/2009 2:12:16 AM (GMT-5)

Just some thoughts about creation/sustaining from Gregory of Nyssa’s “On the Making of Man.”

Under the first article, while describing the creation of the universe he writes:

“…as a sort of bond and stability for the things that were made the divine power and skill was

implanted in the growth of things, guiding all things with the reins of a double operation (for it was by rest and motion that it devised the genesis of the things that were not, and the continuance of the things that are)…”

Gregory is big on the power of creatures to self-determine, so the “guiding” above doesn’t mean “determine.”

“…the great Moses indicating, I suppose, where he says that the heaven and the earth were made by God ‘in the beginning’ that all things that are seen in the creation are the offspring of rest and motion, brought into being by the Divine will.”

And created entities are:

“…empowered by the Divine will….”

Interesting.

Gregory has some very strange beliefs about human origins, gender and procreation, the nature of Eden, etc. And several key doctrines of his are supported by an appeal to divine foreknowledge—God foresaw that this and that would occur and based on this foreknowledge decided to create humankind this and not that way, for example.

Tom

Post Edited (Similtude) : 8/23/2009 6:17:26 PM (GMT-5)